Tag: women

I didn’t march yesterday. Our government shut down and I stayed home in my pajamas merely contemplating the state of the world rather than taking to the streets.

There wasn’t actually a march in my area this year. There may have been one last year but I lived elsewhere then. I wasn’t even in that place last year. I was in California studying at San Francisco Theological Seminary toward my certificate in spiritual direction. I was near a march but I decided not to go mostly because I would have been going alone. I didn’t know others that were going. Though I knew strangers would have become friends in the midst of the protest, the logistics of it overwhelmed me and instead I went to the beach and prayed.

Yesterday I could have attended an Impeachment Rally or I could have joined in the Handmaids Procession to demonstrate my conviction that Roe v. Wade should be upheld, but instead I was home.

Instead, I put another load of cloth diapers in the washer, breastfed my tiny human even after she’d stopped feeding 30 minutes ago (it seems she’s in a growth spurt) and contemplated whether or not yesterday would be a day I would shower. Or not. (It was not such a day as it turns out.)

There was once a time where I saw myself as an activist. There is still part of me that wishes that I could be a better activist. I’ve wished that I could have been the kind of pastor that was incremental in transformative change by showing up in picket lines, singing from loud speakers and locking myself in congresswomen’s offices but I found that I didn’t do these things often. Not because opportunity didn’t present itself. It did, but I found myself making other choices. I found that the heart of my ministry wasn’t on the front lines of justice but it was in the messiness of loving people. I chose the bedside over the march almost every time so maybe it’s not surprising that I’m not marching today. Maybe it shouldn’t be a big deal and yet I have to wonder what I will tell my daughter.

When she learns about the inauguration of the 45th president, will she ask me if I joined in the marches in every city? Will she scan my tweets from ten or fifteen or twenty years ago looking for whether or not I added my voice to #metoo or #blacklivesmatter? Will she then challenge me to why I didn’t do more?

That’s what gives me pause because I could do more. I should do more. I want do to more even in this season where I choose a different kind of bedside. This is what I’m not sure I’ll be able to explain to my daughter in ten or fifteen or twenty years because I’m not quite sure I can explain it to myself.

It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to march alone last year, but that I was ambivalent about the founding of this particular protest. I was then and remain today concerned that we don’t know how to talk about the value of one person without talking about the value of all people. We can’t just talk about women and their created worth without confessing the sins that women can and do commit against each other. I’ve made my own excuses about this, and I’m trying hard to do better. So I didn’t feel totally comfortable aligning myself with a group of white women when I knew there were lives that were going to be more horrifically impacted by this particular administration.

How will I explain this to my daughter? Will I tell her that each time I fed her at my breast, I scrolled through the headlines on my phone to see one more deportation? How will I explain to her how it felt to see that another black child shot? Will I even remember their names when she asks me why I didn’t march?

How will I explain my resistance when it feels like every bit of radical feminism I once had has been overcome by piles of laundry and petty arguments with my husband about who will do the dishes in the sink? I hope that I don’t remember this absurdity in ten or fifteen or twenty years.

I hope I remember instead that I did use my words. I didn’t have a pulpit when she was very small. I wasn’t leading the chants as I once did. No one handed me a loud speaker, but I chose this particular bedside by her crib. I read her stories. I sang with her. I gave her the tools that she would need to persist. It’s what I did as a pastor too. It’s what my ministry turned out to be I wasn’t always on the front lines, but I did everything I could to help others be there. I’d read those names in worship. We’d confess our sins. We’d recommit to doing better.

I may not be on the front lines of this fight but I still believe we can do better. I know we can. I’m raising a little girl in the certainty of this faith. It’s not the path that I thought I’d take. I’m not the activist I once believed I could be, but I will raise her in the resistance. I will raise her to fight the good fight.

Trigger Warning: The content of this post may be triggering for people who have experienced sexual assault.

I was in college. I was drunker than I should have been—much drunker—and I was flirting with a boy. We kissed sloppily. One thing led to another and I left the bar with him. We went back to his place where he pinned me down to the bed and I said, “No.”

I laughed out loud but it didn’t feel like my story. Not anymore. There was a time in my ministry when I heard these comments said every single day. There was a time when I felt like I needed to fight for the rights of women to lead in the church with every good bit of exegesis that I could muster from Paul’s would-be mandate that women should be silent. But, it hasn’t felt like my fight anymore. That is, until Sunday.

I had heard that this little church had had some hesitancy about hiring a female pastor. It was said in passing once or twice before. Even if it hadn’t been voiced, I could see in their history. They had been blessed by countless women who have preached and presided in the years since their beloved pastor died but they had never, ever hired a woman to lead them. Until Sunday, I hadn’t thought much of this. There could be a thousand reasons of this. After all, in the United Church of Christ, according to the 2015 statistical report, 47.9% of all active, non-retired authorized ministers are female.

Until Sunday, I wasn’t especially worried about the majority of men holding that 52.1%. It was on Sunday that I heard both the fear and the welcome of women in ministry. It wasn’t the focus of the conversation. But, somewhere in the middle of discussing John Dorhaurer’s Beyond Resistance, we got onto inclusive language. That was when the dear 90 year old woman seated beside me told me that she didn’t think that women should ever lead. She didn’t think that women should be pastor and she didn’t think that a woman should be president. It was then that I heard every hesitation about women in leadership that had bubbled under the surface.

So, I asked this dear 90 year old woman why she felt this way and she struggled for an answer. She told me that that was how it had always been and she didn’t understand why it needed to change. Even so, she saw that it was changing. Everything around her is changing so much so that she kept repeating the question, “Why can’t I change?”

On the third or fourth repetition of this question, the conversation within that small group turned to my leadership. It wasn’t about women’s leadership but what I brought to this group of people. I get up each Sunday to preach but I do not like being the center of attention. I hid under my book as they started listing off my strengths. I didn’t want this to be all about me but I heard every word.

They were ready to not like me. They were ready to reject me on the fact that I was a woman. And yet, there is something different about the way that I lead. They’ve noticed that only in these few months that I have been their interim pastor. I preach differently. I ask more questions. I want to know what they think. I don’t assume that I have all of the answers.

When that dear old lady asked again, “Why can’t I change?” I told her she didn’t have to because it is enough that she loves me. There is some truth in that but it is not enough to love only those that you can see. It is not enough to celebrate the strengths of those that God puts in your way. Until Sunday, I did not realize how comfortable I had become with my own privilege.

In that same 2015 statistical report, it states that over half of co-pastors (51.5%) and interim / supply pastors (53.4%) were female, and over two-thirds (70.3%) were associate / assistant pastors. Next year, I will be counted in this percentage. I am so grateful to have meaningful work but that is not true for every woman. There are women that can’t bust through the stained glass ceiling because the local church refuses to celebrate the strengths of women in ministry or the gifts of people of color or the gifts of LGBT pastors.

In his book, the same one that was supposed to be the focus of our conversation that Sunday, John Dorhauer makes the point that autonomy is what will kill us. Autonomy is what allows every congregation to dismiss women’s leadership. There is no hierarchy to insist that God might be up to something. There is no one to hint at the strength of women because the “basic unit of the life and organization” in the United Church of Christ is the local church. Nothing in the denomination’s Constitution and the Bylaws “shall destroy or limit the right of each Local Church to continue to operate in the way customary to” the local church. Until Sunday, I had ignored that this is still my fight. It’s still my struggle. It’s still my task to push through the stained glass ceiling (and every other ceiling) by reminding myself and everyone else that yes, yes, you really do need to change.